


Got My Both Eyes Out (For Mr. Right)

by Electra_XT



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Ultimates
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-23 19:18:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18708346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Electra_XT/pseuds/Electra_XT
Summary: “Oh, good, you’re here,” Tony said. “I was waiting for you. I have dinner.”“Tony?” Steve said. “You have ten seconds to tell me why you broke into my home.”





	Got My Both Eyes Out (For Mr. Right)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Hideaway" by Daya!

“Did you find everything okay?” the cashier at Duane Reade asked Steve, waving his shaving cream under the scanner. She looked as tired as Steve felt.

“Fine, ma’am,” Steve said. He shifted his weight. He had spent fifteen minutes hovering between the aisles, squinting at the signs to figure out whether dental floss was “Personal Care” or “Hygiene.” It turned out it was “Essentials,” which was, in his opinion, bullshit, but he wasn’t about to tell that to the cashier. He lifted his chin.

Jan broke up with him because he was incompetent and lagging behind the rest of society. She also broke up with him because he was too old. The infractions added up: Jan had looked at him like work-in-progress would be too kind a phrase, like every time she saw him she was freshly disappointed that he wasn’t a grinning underwear model, his teeth didn’t gleam even a little, he dressed himself in high-waisted pleated pants, and he had to be cajoled to smile at events. Since the serum, hadn’t he become handsome? Apparently that wasn’t enough for women these days. 

Well, if Jan wanted someone who was the whole package, handsome and flashy with a reputation and a bottle of champagne and an inability to keep it in his pants, she could go on a date with Tony Stark.

“You want a bag?” the cashier asked.

“Yes, thank you,” Steve said.

“Have a good one,” the cashier said, pushing his listless little plastic bundle across the counter at him. Steve raised a hand in awkward goodbye as he headed in what he thought was the right direction. “Sir? Other way, sir.”

Steve turned back and nodded at her before hurrying towards the exit. The door of the Duane Reade told him goodbye in seventeen languages and opened as soon as he set foot on the motion-sensor mat. Was that normal? Steve was so tired of the future. 

He didn’t need Jan, he thought, stepping out of the drugstore onto the dark sidewalk. The wind whipped his scarf around his neck and the cold bit at his face. It would be nice to come home to a hot dinner, but he couldn’t say that to anyone anymore without getting accused of being a sexist. Maybe he was just hungry— did he even have food in the house? Maybe he could heat up the chicken he froze from last week. He had to get to his apartment in time to start defrosting it. He was almost home; he’d get there. No, Steve did not need anybody. He could get around by himself. He could go to Bucky and Gail’s on Sunday afternoons like he always did if he wanted someone to cook for him. Bucky and Gail would always have his back.

_Always?_ his brain whispered.

Steve shook his head as he turned onto his street. He couldn’t— couldn’t even think about that.

He needed someone better. He needed someone who would laugh with him, not at him; a person with a wide smile and hands that would find his if he was at one of Tony’s terrible parties with flashbulbs going off and people going “woo!” at him. He needed someone who knew how to handle him, who wouldn’t hang back or hover after a battle or fuss over him or try to scrape the dirt out of his boots and end up scraping off the rubber. He didn’t need a mother. He wanted someone who thought he was attractive— he was a man, he had needs— but wouldn’t treat him like a pet. Perhaps someone who would look at him with respect when he hit people, who wouldn’t bite their lip and try to pretend they didn’t care that he was a soldier and a machine and very, very good at killing people.

At his building, Steve punched in his passcode, making sure not to push the buttons in too hard. The wall still bore the dents from the last time he got lost in thought.

—

The door to his apartment was open.

Steve squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself not to shed a single goddamn tear. Hadn’t this already happened enough? He was stronger than this. It wasn’t like he couldn’t handle a lousy vandal, and if they were still inside he’d give them a good shake, but the last time he had been violated like this was so… terrible. He had to take a deep breath before he shouldered open the door to meet whatever miserable little tramp wanted to make fun of his forties decorating and half-assed record wall with a can of paint thinner this time.

“Don’t even think about it,” he called out, pushing the door open. 

“Oh, good, you’re here,” Tony Stark said. “I was waiting for you. I have dinner.”

Steve stared. Tony was sitting on the sofa with one leg crossed over the other and two steamed-up plastic containers balanced on his lap. His suit jacket lay across the back cushion behind him like a haphazard shadow and his tie was loosened in the collar of his satin shirt. The five-o’clock shadow on his jaw blurred the usually sharp lines of his goatee and there was a strange bruise on his cheekbone— was it from a fight or the chemotherapy?— but his eyes were bright. He looked amused.

“What are you doing here?” Steve said.

“Have you seen The Matrix?” Tony said.

“What?”

“Pretty good movie,” Tony said. “A little strange, you know, the kind of thing that you have to take a walk around after watching. It was big a few years ago. Have you seen it?”

“No,” Steve said. “Why are you in my apartment?”

“I watched it this afternoon instead of going to a board meeting,” Tony said. “I was too tired to play with the executives. These drugs are skipping me past the fun phases of being a drunk and into the damaged part, I swear, it’s deeply exhausting. To be fair I would be exhausted anyway because that damned armor of mine is a chore to operate, but to the point, I was watching the movie and it ended and I had this dinner to go to so I went and got dressed, because an interesting thing about being rich and brilliant and having cancer is that it’s still frowned upon to attend a fancy dinner party in a housecoat— did I say interesting thing? I meant tragedy. So I was getting dressed in this heartbreakingly cut Versace as a balm for that particular disappointment and I was still thinking about the movie— I missed it when it first came out, I was invited to the premiere, but I bailed because I felt like doing coke with Kate Moss instead, and I don’t know in retrospect whether that was the right choice. Anyway, let’s skip a bit, I was at dinner —”

“Tony?” Steve said. “You have ten seconds to tell me why you broke into my home.”

“No, darling, give me fifteen?”

“Ten,” Steve said. “Nine—”

“IwantedtoseeyouandIwaslonely,” Tony said in a rush.

That was not what Steve was expecting.

“I brought you dinner,” Tony said, holding out one of his containers. “And I brought a DVD of the movie, too. I figured that maybe… maybe you wouldn’t want to be alone either.”

Steve stiffened. It was one thing to be dumped, but quite another to have another man show up at you house to pity you about it.

“I don’t need you here,” Steve said. He was still standing, but he dropped his bag. 

“I thought you might be hungry,” Tony said. His lips curved up. “It’s dinnertime, you know.”

“Why me?” Steve said. “You were— you could have gone to anyone.”

“I wanted to sit here and stare at your record collection while I waited for you to walk all the way home from SHIELD,” Tony said. “You’re missing some, by the way. I was surprised.”

Steve followed his gaze to the shelf of records. “I’m missing a lot of them.”

“I thought you had them restored.” Tony produced a cocktail shaker from nowhere and idly turned it over in his hands.

“There was a break-in.” Steve swallowed. “They got…”

“I know about the break-in, darling. I meant after the break-in.”

“I don’t have the money,” Steve said.

“I have a lot of money,” Tony said, picking up the cocktail shaker.

Steve waited until Tony was done obnoxiously shaking his cocktail, and then he gave him a look.

“Did you know I’m good at finding things?” Tony said. “I am. I found your helmet from the war for you. It wasn’t originally for sale, but I made my case. Render unto Captain America that which is Captain America’s…” He unscrewed the lid of the shaker and took a sip straight from it. He gestured at the wall, or at Steve. “I could find you whatever records you wanted. We could make a project of it.”

Steve blinked. He and Jan had tried to do that. They’d made a day out of it: went hunting in thrift stores, gone to lunch. Steve had eaten a sandwich that cost eleven dollars, and Jan had thrown her blue plastic credit card on the table and leaned back— it had been sunny that day, and Steve could remember the spark of interest he felt at the bright spots of sunlight slanting across her neck and collarbones, because he wanted to paint them and he hadn’t wanted to paint anything since he woke up— that was the beginning of the beginning. Jan humming in the musty vintage store. Steve realizing he was a musty vintage object. Jan texting under the table at the Elks Club on her horrible little black cell phone with the buttons. Steve having to smile at Bucky and Gail while part of his mind was exasperated at Jan and wanted to crush that horrible black phone in his two strong hands. Then standing on his own doorstep with Jan, the day of the break-in, the devastation at having his home violated, Jan’s little “oh” of pity, the rush of anger equalled only by the rush of despair, then showing up at Tony’s and taking his own helmet in his two hands, the same hands that had wanted to grind Jan’s phone until the plastic buttons scattered to the floor, and feeling the unchangeable weight of it, the dirt. The records seemed far away. His timeline was so hopelessly bent.

“Or not,” Tony said. His voice was light, but he put down the cocktail shaker.

“Or not,” Steve said.

“Another time, darling.” Tony reached out to pat Steve’s hand and Steve recoiled. If Tony could feel how fast Steve’s heart was beating, he didn’t say anything about it. 

“Apologies,” Tony said smoothly.

“No,” Steve said, and it came out sounding too rough. “I’m— I’m sorry. Been thinking a lot lately. I’m…” He swallowed. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“Well,” Tony said, “I was sitting there with this cedar-plank salmon in front of me and thinking about The Matrix, and I suddenly realized I didn’t want to be there at all. So I downed my martini, told everyone not to miss me too much, called a cab and came here.” He considered the containers on his lap. “I took the salmon with me. I thought you might like it.”

“Janet broke up with me,” Steve said. 

The words came out of his mouth without warning and he winced. He shouldn’t be breaking down like this. First being afraid of vandals, then laying all his love-life drama on Tony— he was getting soft. There was no reason for Tony to care about his problems.

“Captain Handsome hasn’t been dumped before?” Tony said, throwing back the last of whatever ungodly potion was in the shaker. 

He should have known better than to let his guard down around Tony. Steve opened his mouth, about to cuss him out, but Tony put his hands up. “I’m sorry,” he said, and it sounded like his real voice, not his media-blitz one. “That was uncalled for. I propose that we sit down and work this out over a five-star meal that I technically did not steal, because hunger never makes anything better. And then, if you’re in the mood, we can sit here and not talk and watch a movie about life being an elaborate simulation. Damn, that was a spoiler, forget I said that.”

“Forget what?” Steve said.

“Nothing,” Tony said, looking disproportionately relieved. “Anyway, that’s my proposal. How does that sound?” 

This was the moment when he could kick Tony out of his apartment or snap at him about how he didn’t need his pity and watch the disappointment flash across Tony’s face and get quickly covered up by bitterness. Tony would say something awful and Steve would punch him and Tony would leave and slam the door shut behind him, and Steve would spend the evening in front of the television, holding the package of frozen chicken he’d forgotten to defrost to his stinging knuckles and telling himself he’d gone longer without food in the Army.

But this was what he wanted: to come home to the lights on and a person on the sofa. To come home and have dinner ready, even if it was overpriced lukewarm salmon in a plastic box warmed in the lap of a lecherous, cancer-ridden billionaire with an incurable dependence on alcohol and an ego with the blast range of an imploding star.

“I’d like that,” Steve said. “I’d like that a lot.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this, you can reblog its post on [ Tumblr! ](https://electra-xt.tumblr.com/post/184647847536/fic-got-my-both-eyes-out-for-mr-right) :)


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